Dry Hopping & Spices In English Bitter

[richardo]

I'm about to repeat a recipe for a traditional style English bitter, using the following:

Muntons premium bitter kit
Brewcraft kit converter (English bitter) consisting 1kg mix of maltose, dextrose and malto-dextrin, some malted barley and 15g Goldings
500g light dried malt

I'm also planning to add a bag of Fuggles. Should i do this in primary or when I rack to secondary (I forgot to write down how I did it last time)?

Also, I'd like to add some spice when I boil up the converter mix (I'm thinking something like a Young's London Special Bitter flavour). I heard Chinese 5-spice is a good one. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Dazza_devil]

I don't think English Bitters are traditionally dry-hopped.

 

[manticle]

Actually I think that might be a more modern trend if 'Old British Beers and How to Brew them' is anything to go by. There's a lot of recipes in there that call for dry hopping.

@hop-along - it really depends on what you want from hops as to when you add them. If it's aroma hopping you're after, add in secondary as fementation can drive off a lot of volatile compounds.

 

[Dazza_devil]

Actually I think that might be a more modern trend if 'Old British Beers and How to Brew them' is anything to go by. There's a lot of recipes in there that call for dry hopping.

Interesting Manticle, sounds like a good book. Any chance of a recipe from the book? What dry-hopping method did they use?
I was going from the Style Guidelines.
I guess the Munton's kit would have zero hop aroma.

 

[Wolfy]

I'm about to repeat a recipe for a traditional style English bitter, using the following:
...
Also, I'd like to add some spice when I boil up the converter mix (I'm thinking something like a Young's London Special Bitter flavour). I heard Chinese 5-spice is a good one. Anyone have any suggestions?

Randy Mosher has recreated a 'London Ale' recipe from 1822 in his book, and suggests using (bitter) orange peel, coriander seed, ginger and some salt.

 

[manticle]

@Hop along - I'm doing a young's special london clone at the moment. I believe the citrus spice comes from the hopping (dry hopped with East Kent Goldings and Target).

@Boagsy: It's a very interesting book (almost more of a pamphlett) with just shy of 150 recipes for their take on old British ales (Durdsen park Society). Unfortunately the recipes are written very basically so you have to do some figuring out of amounts etc (no volumes ). However it does specify dry hops and a couple of recipes talk about late (presumably flavour or aroma) so it's likely that most other hops are bittering.
Weights for hops and malts are given in ounces and pounds - no mention of when for the hops but combined with the gravity, you can figure out your final volumes. No mash schedules although the earlier information in the book goes into some basic details on that. No IBU measurement.


For example: Simonds Brewery Bitter from 1880 has the following info:

OG 62 (1062)
2lb 10 oz pale, 8 oz pale amber malt

3/4 oz fuggles, 1/6 oz Goldings late and 1/10 dry hops (presumably goldings again)

3 month maturation period.

 

[Dazza_devil]

I'm really pleased you have shared that info Manticle.
I'm now looking at English Bitters in a new light and I believe it's a good one. I'm planning now to really see what these English hops can do. After all they do smell pretty good so why not get a bit of the delicious flavour and aroma in the beer.
Might even invest in the book.

 

[manticle]

It's a good book. Happy to post a more specific recipe if you have one in mind.

Check out the aforementioned youngs special london ale if you want an indication of how delicious a well hopped (and late hopped) english ale can be. Kind of like an English Tripel.

 

[Dazza_devil]

It's a good book. Happy to post a more specific recipe if you have one in mind.

Check out the aforementioned youngs special london ale if you want an indication of how delicious a well hopped (and late hopped) english ale can be. Kind of like an English Tripel.

Dunno, I was planning an EIPA, 1028 with Boadicea late. I would like to brew something that was close to a historical IPA, just wish I had the sailing ship to replicate the maturation. Some spices sound very English to me also but hops first. My base malts are still bound by the available extracts unfortunately.

 

[manticle]

Dunno, I was planning an EIPA, 1028 with Boadicea late. I would like to brew something that was close to a historical IPA, just wish I had the sailing ship to replicate the maturation. Some spices sound very English to me also but hops first. My base malts are still bound by the available extracts unfortunately.

According to the book, India pales were quite strong (early ones around 1070), very pale and matured for a long time (between one autumn and the next). Very highly hopped but the maturation process allowed that to blend in well.

Hopping rates of Hodgson's -(OG 1070) - 2/12 oz per gallon of 5% aa hops and then dry hopped before travel. I interpret that to mean high level of bittering hops (whatever 2 1/2 oz per UK gallon equals), long maturation and then dry hopped just before consumption. Later IPAs dropped to 50-60 and 1.1 - 1.2 oz per gallon.

Recipe for Amsinck East India Pale Ale from 1868

3lbs pale malt, 3 oz Kent Goldings, 1/2 oz dry hop (EKG again).
OG - 1062. Maturation period one year.

Hopefully you can glean something from that and tweak it. I'll let you do the conversions and calculations.

 

[richardo]

Randy Mosher has recreated a 'London Ale' recipe from 1822 in his book, and suggests using (bitter) orange peel, coriander seed, ginger and some salt.

Interesting, as I recently made a Hoegaarden style incorporating coriander and orange peel, a good blend of spice and citrus and kind of what I'm looking for in this one. I don't want to put something totally wrong in and f*&k it up.

I like drinking beer with curry, but I don't want to drink beer that tastes like curry...

Thanks for the feedback all.